Maritime and Coastguard Agency

Abstract Small-scale fisheries account for almost 90 percent of global fisheries employment and are responsible for landing more than 40% of the world’s fish catch. Yet their importance to livelihoods and food and nutrition security in Least Developed Countries are only recently emerging due to the logistical, financial, and capacity challenges of gathering and interpreting data in this diverse, dispersed and informal sector. Peskas was designed as a low-cost solution to tackle this problem, providing a template workflow for ingestion and analysis to a decision dashboard, which can be adapted to different contexts and needs.

John (Jack) Francis Talling was a master limnologist who pioneered much of our understanding of the River Nile, the great lakes of the African Rift Valley and those of the English Lake District. He was one of the world's leading authorities on the ecophysiology of freshwater phytoplankton and specialized in the control of their productivity by light and carbon dioxide. His perspectives were formed by interaction with leading scientists of the day, mainly at the Freshwater Biological Association, Cumbria, but also at laboratories in Africa and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California. Jack's work on the effects of light on phytoplankton productivity was based on detailed measurements of the underwater light climate in lakes and oceans as well as laboratory and field measurements of the response of phytoplankton photosynthesis to light, involving the development of new or improved measurement methods. Calculation procedures were developed to estimate how light controls primary productivity. He devised the widely used characteristic ‘ I k ’ to quantify the onset of light saturation in the curve that defines the response of photosynthesis to light quantity. Experiences in extremely productive African soda lakes stimulated an interest in the possibility of CO 2 being a limiting factor controlling phytoplankton productivity and, more generally, Jack had the ecological insight to recognize that ecological dynamics resulted from interactions among factors rather than a response to a single variable.

The inclining experiment is typically performed for all new-build ships and after any major refit. The purpose of the inclining experiment is to establish the vertical distance of the centre-of-mass of the ship above its keel in the lightship condition. This value is then taken as the point of reference when loading the ship, for establishing the ‘in-service’ stability, throughout the life of the ship. Experimental uncertainty analysis is commonly utilised in hydrodynamic testing to establish the uncertainty in a result as a function of the input variables. This can in turn be utilised to establish an interval about the result that may be expected to encompass a large fraction of the distribution of values that could reasonably be attributed to the measurement. This paper provides a methodology for calculating a confidence interval for the location of the centre-of-mass of a ship from an inclining experiment; and ultimately, in any load condition.The uncertainty compared to an assumed metacentric height of 0.15m is provided for four classes of ship: buoy tender 0.15±0.15m (±100%); super yacht 0.150±0.033m (±22.0%); supply ship 0.150±0.047m (±31.3%), container ship 0.150±0.029m (±19.3%), ropax 0.150±0.077m (±100%).

Abstract Previous trials have been carried out using dispersants to clean surfaces along shorelines. Those trials showed that dispersants were effective at removing weathered oil from a variety of surfaces. However alternative cleaning agents are available to remove contamination from impacted substrates, this paper details trials carried out on an approved product in the UK. In the UK the use of dispersants is a regulated activity, The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) oversees that regulation and maintains a list of products which may be used in oil spill response in UK waters. There is one surface cleaning product which has been approved for use by Defra. While dispersants are used to disperse surface oil into the water columnsurface cleanersare designed to aid the removal of oil from surfaces for recovery using standard skimming devices. The product is an organic solvent partly formed from citrus oil extracts. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency sponsored a series of trials to identify the most appropriate and effective techniques for the use of the surface cleaning agent. The trials were carried out using several different oil types, oil state, substrate and cleaning techniques. This paper describesl the findings of these trials and the means for developing best practice for the use of surface cleaners The use of surface cleaners is not a new response technique and they have been used during several major incidents including the Exxon Valdez and the Prestige.

ABSTRACT On Tuesday, January 5, 1993, the tanker Braer laden with 84,700 metric tons of Norwegian Gullfaks crude oil drifted aground at Garths Ness, Shetland Islands. Over the next eight days, the vessel's total cargo of crude oil was spilled. The Marine Pollution Control Unit immediately activated the Marine Emergencies Information Room in London and deployed staff to Shetland. It was agreed with Shetland Islands Council to establish a joint response center at Sumburgh Airport to coordinate and control the shoreline cleanup. The incident affected an area of international environmental importance and also threatened the local economy. Because of the lightness of Gullfaks crude and the severe weather, the bulk of the oil dispersed naturally and very little came ashore. The land beyond the shoreline was polluted by airborne oil spray carried on the storm force winds. Aerial spraying of dispersant on oil on the sea took place on three days. Some environmentally sensitive areas were protected by booms and dams. Of the 39 sites considered at risk, only 9 beaches and other sites merited cleaning.